Chili today, hot tamale - Planting Aerogarden Chili Peppers

Now that the herbs are planted and out of the way, it's time for the fun stuff. I took out the
Chili Pepper Seed Kit I'd ordered from the Aerogarden Store.

On the box, they do a good job of describing not just what kind of hot chili peppers to expect, but also how spicy they are using the Scoville unit:

• Mini Jalapeno (2500-8000, green-ripe)
• Red Fire (40,000-50,000, red-ripe)
• Purple Super Hot (140,000-160,000 purpose-ripe)

The Scobille unit is the unit of measure for capsaicin (the stuff that makes peppers hot). On the Scoville scale, sweep peppers are 0-100 and habaneros are 200,000-300,000.

So if all goes well, by this time a few weeks from now, I will have green, red, and purple chilis to use in my cooking.

I was a little nervous because on the outside of the box it read "New for 2007".

The last time I got a box like this, I got old seed which never sprouted. But my concerns were abated when I opened the box:

This was a good sign. The box included liquid nutrients and the newest style of seed pods, neither of which was available in 2007. My guess is that they printed way too many of these boxes in 2007, and just reused them rather than reprinting them. Hopefully in new boxes they know now to make things date-specific.

The box came with seven seed pods (two mini jalapenos, two red fires, and three purple super hots). I decided to plant them in my old VeggiePro, in hopes that I can raise super-tall chili plants. The VeggiePro is only a six-pod garden, so I had to leave off one of the purple super hots.

You know the drill--fill Aerogarden with water, plop the seed pods in, and cover them with the plastic domes. Here's what the garden looked like with all the pods planted:

And so now I have all three Aerogarden units going again. The bottom shelf contains my herb garden, I'm using the middle shelf to provide grow light for the parsley plant I planted from the last Aerogarden, and the top shelf is for my peppers.